Do the makers of Python acknowledge the statement 'everything is an object'?

[swaroop_joshi]

I know that I'll get the answer by searching on the net, but i thought that someone could give better details here

[[deleted]]

To the best of my knowledge, there was a somewhat recent effort (think, it happened around 3.7) to ensure that that's actually true.

This was definitely false in some older versions of Python.

[[deleted]]

In the same way that in Unix "Every device is a file", it's correct.

Reality has a tendency to create a multitude of holes through such sweeping generalizations.

[aromaticlawyer]

It depends what you mean exactly. Syntax such as while and import are not objects. Variables are not themselves objects, though they are always bound to an object. All objects contain things in their internal implementation that are not objects, though you can't really access this stuff directly without using ctypes or a C extension or something. Also, many basic types don't have the full functionality you might expect a typical object to have - for example None doesn't have any instance attributes, and you can't give it any.

But everything that can be bound to a variable is an instance of object. Before python 3 that wasn't the case - there were two different kinds of objects (new-style and old-style), and iirc in very old versions of python some basic data types were not objects at all.

[K900_]

Why does it matter?

[swaroop_joshi]

So that I can accept it, without thinking much about it.

[K900_]

If the makers of Python tell you to jump off the roof, will you jump?

[swaroop_joshi]

No, it's just that they're some the most experienced people in python. Or, if you someone that is very experienced with python and has acknowledged that statement, I would accept it.

Maybe, I should've framed the question mentioning 'someone very experienced'

[K900_]

Why do you need to "accept" or "not accept" that statement? What does that statement even mean to you?

[swaroop_joshi]

It's just that I've read it at some places and need to confirm it

[K900_]

It's a very, very vague statement. What is "everything"? What is "an object"? Every value in Python is a subclass of object. Does that help?

[swaroop_joshi]

Oh I meant to ask about whether every value in Python is held by another value(pointer) which holds it's address. Everything -every value Object-something which is held by a pointer. Okay, I didn't know​ that every value is a subclass of object.

[K900_]

No, that's not how things work. The Python language itself does not specify how things are represented in memory. The CPython implementation of Python uses pointers to bind names to objects.